September first dawned bright and cheery. Ron, Hermione and Ginny were all in various states of excitement at returning to school, Ron because of the food and because he was able to finally see everyone and get out of the house, Hermione because of the excitement of taking new classes, and Ginny, apparently, because she would finally be able to see Dean Thomas. Harry did his best to play along; in truth, he didn't relish returning to a situation where he would be sharing a room with four other boys, under Dumbledore's eye.
The things he was truly looking forward to were the opportunity to look through the restricted section at night, and the fact that he would see Daphne again. He needed another one of their discussions.
He had managed to secure the two books in his trunk as he packed, careful not to let anyone else see. Out of some unexplainable curiosity and need, he thought he might have a chance, if he worked up the courage, to use one of the spells…
The train ride was exceptional in the fact that it did not contain the traditional visit from Draco Malfoy. It was, in fact, entirely uneventful; Harry, who had gotten little sleep the previous night, stretched out and dozed fitfully for the first half of the ride, waking to find Ron and Hermione had been joined by Neville, Luna, Seamus and Parvati.
They spoke idly of what would happen that year. Harry put forward very few opinions, mostly listening. Neville revealed that apparently Dumbledore had managed to drag someone as old as he was out of retirement to join the staff that year.
He's really scraping the bottom of the barrel now,thought Harry. Why exactly were people so unwilling to work for Dumbledore? He was held in great esteem by the Wizarding World, that much was obvious. Was the Defense position truly jinxed? Was that possible?
Harry considered the extensive reading he had done over the past week. It likely was possibly, though it would be an extremely difficult bit of spellwork to manage to curse a teaching position, and so vaguely that each teacher was forced to leave for an entirely different reason.
"Harry, do you think we'll continue the DA this year?" asked Seamus cautiously. Harry tore his gaze away from the window, out of which he had been staring for most of the ride.
"Nah. Why bother?" he said. Seeing their expressions, he elaborated. "The whole world knows what's going on now. We should have a different Defense teacher now, someone better."
And Dumbledore can't always rely on me to clean up his messes. He's the one who refuses to teach these people proper Defense. I don't have the obligation to.
"You seem very quiet, Harry," said Luna Lovegood vaguely. Harry glanced at her. Her expression yielded nothing more than the usual dreamy, slightly puzzled appearance it usually took on.
"I'm sort of tired," said Harry in his own defense. Was Luna the only one who was picking up on his rather mutinous mood?
"Yes, I noticed that you slept for most of the ride," she replied, blindingly stating the obvious as only Luna could.
Harry shrugged, and turned back to the window.
They arrived at the school without incident, a source of great relief for Harry. He endured the carriage-ride with Luna, Neville and Hermione, Ron having gotten into one with Dean, Lavender and Parvati.
He caught a glimpse of Daphne's sleek blond hair as he crowded into the Entrance Hall with the rest of the school, but he got no chance to speak to her as they entered the Great Hall. Harry immediately glanced up at the staff table. Dumbledore sat there, serene as always. On his left sat Professor McGonagall, and on his right…
"Who is that?" he muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.
"Horace Slughorn," said Ron, coming up on Harry's left. "I heard someone mention his name on the train. Looks like a giant walrus, doesn't he?"
"Yes," said Harry, not having listened to Ron past the name he had mentioned. Whoever this man was, he looked nothing like a Defense Teacher. Harry wondered how he could cope with the school.
He seated himself at his regular spot at the Gryffindor table, and did his best to stop himself from straining to look at Daphne. He had a clear view of her from here.
As though bidden by his gaze, she turned and smiled at him, then held up one finger.Wait,Harry interpreted. She must have known somehow that he wanted to speak to her.
The Sorting began, and Harry watched idly as each tiny new face moved to their house table. They all looked somewhat the same to him, in truth.
Dumbledore stood and began speaking, first introducing the new teacher and surprising everyone.
"Potions?" asked Ron out loud. Dumbledore glanced at him, eyes twinkling, before making his second announcement, which was met with considerably less enthusiasm.
"Snape?"shouted Dean into the uproar. "He'll kill us all! He can't teach us Defense!" the Potions Master simply sat in his place at the head table, sneering quietly.
When the Hall quieted down, Dumbledore made his customary announcements concerning the Forbidden Forest and forbidden items, and sat. The plates in front of Harry filled with food, and the table filled with conversation.
"How about that then?" asked Ron, his mouth full. "Now we have to continue the DA, Harry. No way can that git teach us anything."
"You never know," said Harry, surprising himself. "I don't think we'll have time, anyway."
"And this could be a good thing for you two," Hermione jumped in. "Maybe this new Potions professor will let you take NEWT Potions! I always thought that O was an obscene mark to have to achieve to be allowed to take the class—"
"I'm not taking Potions," Harry interrupted her. She stopped in mid-rant.
"But it would be a wonderful opportunity! And you want to be an Auror!"
Harry shrugged.Dumbledore convinced me that I want to be an Auror. It was never my idea.He wasn't so sure any more. Working for the ministry certainly held no appeal, and neither did working within the confines of the spells they considered 'acceptable'.
"I might take it," said Ron, looking thoughtful. "This Slughorn bloke doesn't look too bad."
The conversation continued in this vein, and Harry stopped listening, thinking about the books that lay at the bottom of his trunk. Were they secure? Filch had poked at them all with Secrecy Sensors, and apparently was scanning their luggage as well, but would two books cause the odd sticks to glow red, as they had when Crabbe had been inspected? He snorted, remembering this. Apparently the boy was carrying a cursed necklace, wrapped up very carefully in his trunk. The two Ministry employees who had been called in had been very cautious with it, lifting it with a pair of what looked like Muggle tongs.
"Sunday," came a sudden whisper in his ear. It took all his control not to jerk. He turned his head slowly to the right. There was no one there, but if he concentrated, he could see a heat haze, of sorts…
"Disillusionment Charm?" he muttered quietly, and was gratified to hear the sharp intake of breath. It was Daphne, he had no doubt. He could recognize her musical voice.
"Listen to me. Sunday morning, the Room of Requirement. I have a little information for you."
Harry sighed. He had six whole days to wait. "I'll be there." Moments later, he noted the haze moving across the hall back to the Slytherin table.
"I've heard that we're going to learn how to conjure objects," said Hermione in excitement from across the table. "Imagine that!" the rest of the Gryffindors sitting around her lapsed into various states of eye-rolling, most likely because of Hermione's willingness to learn.
Harry was willing to learn. He just wished that what they learned was less censored, less confined to all that was considered 'light'. It made them predictable and foolish-looking. How could they possibly win the war if they refused to use any other type of magic?
The words preyed on Harry's mind as he stared in boredom at Professor McGonagall as she lectured them using probably the same exact words she did with every class, every year. They were in a NEWT class now. She expected them to work harder than they ever had before. They would be learning much more complicated things.
They had received much the same lecture in every class. Professor Flitwick's talk had been frankly amusing, as no one had ever taken him seriously, and no one did now.
Hermione had been correct in almost every one of her assumptions of what they would be learning. In Charms they were beginning with a basic charm that could spray water out of the end of the wand. In Transfiguration they were beginning by conjuring small blocks of wood. She and Ron had both come back raving from their first Potions class, Hermione because she was thrilled at having a teacher who appreciated her skill at the subject and was a truly good instructor, Ron because he had been allowed into the class and actually been praised by the teacher for choosing to take Potions even after he had been told he could not.
"He seemed very interested in you, though," said Hermione with a frown. "He was very disappointed when he was told you weren't taking his class. He said he was looking forward to a chance to work with you."
"Wanted a chance to gawk at my scar, more like," said Harry flatly, squinting at the transfiguration chapter he was supposed to be reading. He had originally been reading one of the books he had brought with him up in the dormitory, but Ron had dragged him down to the common room.
He hadn't had a chance to get to the library either of the previous nights, and he was leery of doing it during the day since Hermione would inevitably tag along. It was Wednesday, and he was sick of schoolwork already. What exactly was the point of these endless essays he had been assigned? They certainly weren't helping him learn the practical aspects of magic, which was really all he needed to be doing.
The only interesting class that they had been in so far—meaning not identical to the classes of the previous five years—had been Defense.
Ron had griped and moaned about it just as he had after every class taught by Snape, but Harry had come out of it rather thoughtful. Professor Snape certainly didn't appear to be opposed to the Dark Arts. What he had really been doing was voicing many of the thoughts that Harry had entertained over the summer, that the Dark Arts truly had to be understood, not simply avoided as most of the Wizarding World thought.
Everyone in the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff class had been horrified by the very thought of understanding the Dark Arts.
On Thursday, Snape introduced them to the concept of non-verbal spells, in his usual abusive style. Since many of the spells Harry had read about were non-verbal, he had already been contemplating this method, and was prepared for it.
It was only another state of Occlumency, he thought vaguely as he watched Ron go red in an effort to make the basic shield spell work. If he was calm and concentrated enough, the spell should work fine—all the power really came from his intent, not the word.
Expelliarmus!he thought hard. The spell blew through Ron's muttered shield spell and easily disarmed him.
"How did you do that, mate?" asked Ron, looking shocked. Harry considered telling him, then decided not to.
"Same way as you," Harry said, forcing a grin. Ron grinned back.
On Friday, Ron and Hermione realized that they hadn't gone to see Hagrid, and the half-giant was likely angry at them for all electing not to take his class.
Harry was by this point almost mad with impatience for his conversation with Daphne. He had thought of some rather interesting questions to ask of her in justification of her side, and he was wondering what sort of information she had for him as well.
"You go. I don't really want to," he insisted as Ron retrieved Hermione's cloak for her and they both prepared to leave for Hagrid's hut.
"We owe it to him!" Hermione insisted. "We should explain why we didn't take his subject!"
"Because it's worthless?" Harry snorted, surprising himself. The Care of Magical Creatures class was going into immense detail studying something called a Shrake, a sort of magical salt-water fish. Harry hadn't the slightest interest in learning about Shrakes.
"Er…I suppose…" said Hermione, glancing at Ron, who looked equally taken aback. "We'll tell him hi for you, all right?"
"Sure," said Harry, standing up and heading up the stairs to the dormitory. Out of some unexplainable feeling, he didn't want to see Hagrid. The thought of the half-giant gave him the same feeling of impatience and irritation that thinking of any of his 'friends' did.
That night, when his dorm-mates were sleeping, Harry sat up. Ron had not yet returned, and Harry frankly suspected that he was closeted somewhere in an empty classroom with Hermione. Both of his friends were still denying that anything was going on between them, and it was making Harry increasingly angry. They spent so much time with each other, away from him, that it would have been obvious to Ginny's pet puffskein that they were dating, and snogging whenever they could.
He shrouded his shoulders in the Invisibility Cloak and left the dormitory quickly, Marauders' Map in hand. No one was out in the halls currently besides a few prefects on patrol.
He made it to the library with no incident, crossing quietly over the line that separated the Restricted Section from the rest of the library. It had always puzzled him that there was no better barrier that kept people from looking at the forbidden books; after, all Madam Pince could not be everywhere. He supposed that it was another of Dumbledore's bizarre trust games.
He noticed at once that there were several volumes here that were copies of the books in the Grimmauld Place library. The first shelf he looked at possessed many of the same books in different languages; he recognized them by the covers, and several of the pictures, as he flipped through them.
His lantern burned down slowly as he flipped through the books, occasionally glancing at the Marauders' Map to make sure no one was coming toward him. He wasn't sure what he was looking for anymore. It had started as a search for the spell that had repaired his wand; now he was simply searching for something he didn't know. Perhaps for justification, for the reason that performing any dark spell earned five years in Azkaban; if he was looking for that he hadn't found it yet. Many of the spells he was viewing were unpleasant, but just as many didn't even deserve to be labeled 'dark'.
He whiled away Saturday finishing his week's assignments and dealing with Ron.
He had cared at first when Ron was made Quidditch captain over him; it hardly seemed fair, considering Harry had been on the team first and was the better player, knew the team better and had more confidence. Dumbledore had taken him aside on one of his visits to Grimmauld Place and explained that the position could not be given to someone who would attack a teacher.
He had grown resigned to it over the summer, though, after one accidental magic episode where he had snapped Ron's broom by accident. Luckily, Ron had not been in the room at the time and had sadly put it down to age.
He supposed it was just one more situation when Dumbledore refused to give him any extra honor or responsibility. Apparently the choice was McGonagall's, but Harry had no doubt who had made the final decision.
Ron spent most of the day planning out the tryouts he would hold the following weekend, and got extremely angry when Harry mentioned that he didn't want to spend his Saturday watching quidditch hopefuls try out for the Beater and Chaser positions.
"It's part of your duty as a dedicated team member!" Ron had shouted, his ears reddening. Harry knew he wasn't truly angry. Ron was always over-emotional when it came to Quidditch.
"There's no point in me being there. You would be needed as a Keeper and Katie as a Chaser to pick the new ones, but there's no point for me. Unless you want me there for the glamour of having Harry Potter?"
Ron's face reddened further, and he retreated back behind his playbook.
That is what he wanted.
Harry wasn't sure how he knew, but he did. Ron wasn't above using his friend's fame to secure a good amount of people at the tryouts. In the past week, Harry had realized that in the Hogwarts public eye, he was no longer the deranged attention-seeker that he had been last year; he was now everyone's best friend, the Chosen One.
He marveled at the shallowness of people who had shunned and whispered about him last year and were now eager to shake his hand. He had wondered about Cho Chang's actions at his birthday party, but he had no need to now; she and her friend Marietta seemed to be fawning over him whenever they were near him.
He covered another shelf in the restricted section that night. By his estimation, he could be through the restricted section by the end of October, if he managed to get there twice a week. That night he brought quills and parchment to write down anything that he found particularly interesting; it was full by the third book he picked up.
He nearly nodded off in his eggs the next morning, but kept himself awake through excitement and adrenaline. He wasn't sure exactly why he wanted to see Daphne so badly; he only had a few things to say to her, and at the same time he wanted to know the information she had for him, but for all he knew, she could have none at all.
She worked for the Dark Lord, and he knew it. But he hadn't even mentioned to anyone that he had spoken with her at all. She was intriguing to him, was part of the reason. Everyone he had lived with for the last six years had repeated the same old adages, that the light was good, the dark bad, Dumbledore good, Voldemort bad…
It was fascinating and refreshing to meet someone who could introduce and truly make him believe in this concept of shades of gray, as she called them. That perhaps Dumbledore was not infallible, Voldemort was not constantly wrong. That the difference between dark and light was minute, or perhaps didn't even exist.
Daphne was willing to consider the possibility that the current government was wrong. More than this; she believed it wholeheartedly. Ron and Hermione wouldn't even listen when Harry ventured this opinion.
He had seen her several times over the week, mostly in the company of Blaise Zabini. Now that he thought about it, he had never really seen her with Malfoy's cronies. She was no lapdog of his; her casual references to the Dark Lord gave Harry the impression that she was much closer to Voldemort than Malfoy. Harry was sure the Zabinis sympathized with Voldemort, though they were not outright Death Eaters.
Daphne was probably trying to recruit the tall black boy to her cause. Harry wondered how successful she was.
He evaded Ron and Hermione on Sunday night, claiming a headache, and wandered up to the Room of Requirement around eight o'clock. He didn't even question the fact that Daphne knew of its existence; if she hadn't known about it before, she would have found out when Marietta betrayed the DA last year. And Harry had the shrewd feeling that she had known very well of its existence beforehand.
He walked quickly back and forth three times in front of the door.I need to see Daphne Greengrass…I need to see Daphne Greengrass…I need to—
The door opened, and he stepped in. It shut behind him, and vanished, leaving a blank stone wall.
As he entered, Harry realized that Daphne must have already been there. There was no possible way that he could have come up with this place, even subconsciously.
He was in a room made entirely of glass. Through the transparent walls he could see other rooms, identical to this one, stretching for infinity…he squinted. That, or he was surrounded by mirrors. A tiny fountain stood in the room in the center, as transparent as the rest of the room, the water gushing over a statue of…Harry frowned. It was a wolf, spitting water over itself. What on earth?
"Like it?" came a voice from beside him, and he turned to face Daphne. "It's a werewolf. You can tell by the snout."
"Why?" asked Harry quietly.
"This is a room the Dark Lord took me to, the first time I met him. It helps people to…reflect, you could say. The shape of the fountain becomes something you wonder about, something you question. Tell me…" she walked over to the fountain, studying it. "Why this?"
"I do wonder, sometimes," said Harry. "Why do so many of them choose the dark? Why don't they fight for their rights?"
Her laugh tinkled through the air in the room, bouncing off the glass walls. "You think werewolves never tried to fight for themselves? They only made it worse. Before we were born, of course." She walked closer to him. "You think someone like Fenrir Greyback is born? No. He was created by the corrupt government we have."
Harry frowned, and the fountain changed suddenly. Bellatrix Lestrange stood there, her wand pointed at them, spewing water. Daphne jerked back.
"Tell me," asked Harry, keeping as calm as he could. "If you are so eager to create equal rights, to tear down the government and replace it with a better one, why are there people like her in your ranks? No one can argue that she enjoys torture and murder. Is she really the type of person that you encourage?" the question was a challenge, and Daphne knew it, her eyebrows drawing downwards gracefully as she thought of her answer.
"She will be gone, before the end of the war or after it," she said finally. "Azkaban snapped her sanity, but she is useful to the Master yet. But if she survives the war, he will deal with her himself, certainly. She is too much of a threat, too unreliable, to keep close."
The figure changed again, to a statue of Professor Dumbledore. Harry frowned. He hadn't thought of the Headmaster at all.
"That's one of mine," whispered Daphne. "Your blind faith in him, is what I mean. Do you know why he sent your werewolf friend away?"
"He's on a mission for the Order," said Harry halfheartedly. This was something he disagreed with himself, so he knew he would find it hard to defend.
"Oh, yes? At this opportune time, right after your Godfather was killed?"
Harry frowned. "What?"
Her tinkling laugh sounded again. "We really do need to teach you to think more like a Slytherin, Potter. Black left a Will. Guess who was mentioned in it?"
"Me and Remus," whispered Harry, not sure where this was going. Was he supposed to have collected the will, or been to a reading or some such thing? He hadn't gone to Diagon Alley at all, preferring to allow Mrs. Weasley to pick up his items. At the time he had been more interested in the contents of the room on the third floor of Grimmauld.
"Of course. No one but you two, to split his money and possessions equally. And Black had a lot of possessions, I can tell you. Including that house." She shrugged at Harry's questioning look. "The Master has contacts everywhere, even in the bank."
Harry sighed. So that had been how she had known of the conversation with Dumbledore and Bill in Diagon Alley; someone must have followed them out of Gringotts.
"But as the letter informing you of this never reached you, you couldn't come for the will reading. Neither could Lupin, wherever he was." She shrugged. "Even if you had heard about it on time, you couldn't have done anything. Lupin could have collected the money, but you're underage. Dumbledore was just being extra-careful."
Harry felt as though he was missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. "Won't they just hold the money until one of us comes?"
"Of course. That is their policy. Well, unless someone steps in and says that you sent them, and to place the entire sum in vault 77." She smiled. "Dumbledore's vault."
"What?"
"You're really surprised?" she said, her voice growing slightly in volume. "After everything he's done so far to you and to your life, you are truly surprised that he would take this money from you? I suppose you're lucky he never touched the money your parents left for you."
Harry's fists whitened as he gripped the edge of the fountain. He could feel things rumbling in the school beyond the Room of Requirement. He could feel things breaking.
Before he could take a swing at the image of the Headmaster, it changed again.
He gaped and jerked back at the new statue, the anger draining away into somewhere in the back of his head.
"See, I wonder about you, too," said Daphne softly. "Are you going to continue to follow what you've been forced to believe all these years, or are you going to let yourself stand up for what you really think?"
Harry stared at the statue of himself, clad in a billowing robe and mask. "What are you saying?" he asked shakily.
"You know exactly what I'm saying," she responded, moving casually closer and walking in a slow circle around him. "I'm offering you an honored place in our ranks. A chance to be a major player in the war, on the right side. We want a new government, better laws…we want justice. That means no more Fudge, a new Wizengamot, and no more Albus Dumbledore. So what if we've been painted as the wrong side by him? He's been wrong before, and he certainly is now.
"You would be treated as a respected member, a leader even. No more being tugged every which way by all the people who want a piece of you. With your astonishing…capabilities, the Dark Lord would make you his apprentice. No more book learning, restricted to only on half of the magic that exists." She smiled, drawing closer. "Yes, we know about your little forays into the Restricted Section. Have you been looking at the books at the Black family house, too?"
Harry didn't move, and she stopped her circling directly in front of him, looking directly into his eyes. "Magic is a double-edged sword, Harry. What use is it if we only ever use one side? Why do we hold ourselves back? Why do we crawl in the dust when we could be flying?"
"But Voldemort is wrong," said Harry, his voice cracking.
"Why?" asked Daphne, sounding frustrated. She stepped daintily onto the side of the glass fountain, which turned suddenly into a phoenix, spouting water from it's beak. "We know all about the Order of the Phoenix. What the hell has it ever done for you? What has light magic done for you? It has killed people you care about, repressed your magic, and taken your money! And it will do much worse to you, if you continue to cling to it!"
Her voice, haven risen in anger, suddenly dropped again, filling with excitement. "With the magic termed 'dark' we could do anything. Only recently, the Master has discovered a ritual that will be able to reach beyond the grave! Imagine, being able to communicate with people long dead, learn information that we could never find out with light magic!" her eyes were glowing with fervor.
The fountain changed suddenly, back to the statue of Harry, and Daphne glanced at him. He didn't even need to ask what the message in that look had been. It wasn't Daphne wondering about the image now. It was Harry.
"I can't do this right now," he said hoarsely. "I have to go."
He all but ran from the glass room, his thoughts ruthlessly jumbled. What Daphne had proposed had terrified him, but even more terrifying had been the feeling of excitement, the adrenaline that had rushed through him at the sight of himself, clad in that cloak and mask…
He took a long route back to Gryffindor Tower, stopping by the kitchen to get some food, only to realize he wasn't hungry. He didn't want to go back and confine himself to the common room or his dormitory. He needed a wide open space.
He found himself on top of the Astonomy Tower, staring upwards. It was a cloudy night, and the stars were entirely obscured, but they weren't what Harry was looking for. He didn't really know what it was he was trying to find, only that whatever it was, it wasn't in Hogwarts.
The castle had seemed like home for five years, regardless of the rumors about him, the bad teachers, and any other thing that was making him uncomfortable at the time. He wondered what it was like to have a real home. Hogwarts wasn't helping any more. Everywhere he looked, the shallow children of the Wizarding World pointed and whispered, whispered and pointed. He classes were unsatisfying, and his friends refused to believe any of his thoughts, to the point where he didn't dare propose them anymore.
The only one who understood the way he felt in any way was Daphne, and she wanted…
He sighed. He should have expected it. She had been plain about her allegiances from the moment they had met.
"A cold night."
Harry jumped and spun. Behind him was the man who had found him after his beating from Dudley, then appeared in his dream a few days later.
"How did you get here?"
The man shrugged, and then waved his hand at the Tower wall. It went right through. "I'm not really here at all. It's a form of magic, enabling one to travel outside of their body. I thought that it was past time to pay another visit to you."
"I've never heard of it," said Harry, not really caring. There were so many things that he was unsure about lately that another just didn't matter.
"Probably not. It's dark magic." Harry glanced up, and the man shrugged. "You figured it out for yourself. It's classified as "dark" because the ministry considers it unnatural for the soul to be anywhere other than within the body."
"Would I be able to—" began Harry, then stopped. He didn't want to go down that road.
"If you had gone through what I have, you would find it easy."
Harry stared at the man, wanting him to continue, but not wanting to ask. This wish was apparently picked up on, as the man settled himself companionably beside Harry.
"My soul…is in several different places, you could say. Only a bit of it resides within my body; the rest of it is free to roam."
"How?" Harry asked in interest, forgetting his vow not to speak of dark magic.
"Not free to roam, as such. Kept in different containers, keeping me safe and anchoring me to this world. Many wish to blow me out of this plane of existence, but I am determined to stay in it."
"And you can come here because one is here?"
"Exactly." The man looked pleased. "So. You are finally abandoning the illusions that Dumbledore has left you with for the past five years."
Harry, not bothering to deny the obvious, nodded. He realized that he was sitting down with his knees curled up to his chest in a defensive gesture. He straightened them hastily.
"How did you know?"
"Miss Greengrass is…a friend of mine," came the reply. Harry's brow creased. Something was niggling at him from the back of his consciousness. He ignored it.
"She told me of your frustrations. Quite justified, I believe."
"My frustrations? She's the one trying to get me to join Voldemort," said Harry, without much enthusiasm. He was having a hard time continually disagreeing with something that he wasn't even sure about. It was getting repetitive, and he knew he didn't believe what he was saying.
"Ah, but you were the one who followed her and initiated the conversation in the first place, were you not?"
"No," said Harry. "Well, yes. I suppose. But I never asked for her to try to turn me Dark."
"Did you ever ask Albus Dumbledore to force you to be the center of the light side?"
"No," Harry growled. "I just want him to stay out of my life."
"Doubtful, until you have served your purpose. After that, I strongly suspect that he may force you to disappear."
"What does that mean?" asked Harry quickly.
"It happened quite a lot in the last war. Heroes, people who helped the war effort a great deal, suddenly vanished, deciding to go for a vacation or some such thing, perhaps just retreat into a self-imposed solitary confinement, to get away from the war. Or so the stories went. Dumbledore was left to take the credit. Believe me, there's a reason the prophecy hasn't been made public, and that's because he doesn't want people realizing that he doesn't have the power to stop the impending 'threat'."
"How do you know about the prophecy?" asked Harry sharply.
"Contacts in the Ministry, of course. I don't know the entire thing—only half. It got destroyed, as I believe you know." He fixed Harry with a beady eye. "The point is this. Albus Dumbledore craves glory. He wants people to love him, to see him as a hero. A savior. Too bad you threw a wrench into his plan, to use a muggle expression."
"So what are you saying?"
A shrug. "You spoke at length to Daphne."
"Yes."
"And are you considering her offer?"
Was he?
Did he want to spend the next few years training for a fight that he knew he was unlikely to win, against a wizard who had proven himself the equal of Dumbledore in dueling ability and magic? Did he want to continue life with the same feeling of frustration and unease that he had had for the past week at school, and for that matter the entire summer? Did he want to be restricted, given horrified looks whenever he mentioned the fact that the magic termed 'dark' couldn't be all that bad?
Did he want to be a Death Eater?
But he wouldn't be. Daphne, whom Harry was fairly sure was close to the Dark Lord, had as much as offered him an apprenticeship, a position of respect. But at the same time, Daphne was only 16…
And spying for Voldemort. She knew what she was saying. And what she had said was that Voldemort's aims were nothing like what Dumbledore claimed. He didn't want to raze the wizarding world and destroy the muggle one. He wanted a new ministry, a better justice system, and new laws, just as Harry had wanted on many occasions.
And the ability topunishthe Dursleys for all they had done to him, as well, had some appeal…
Were those the only two options? Choose from two extremes? The Death Eaters or the Order?
Yes, they were. Rufus Scrimgeour had only recently demonstrated the problems with remaining neutral- two attacks on his life, and the Order had done nothing…and Harry was in this war, whether he wanted it or not. The prophecy had proven it.
Harry looked down. "Yes," he whispered. "Yes, I am."
"It's depressing, is it not?" said the tall, angular man softly. "To find that neither side is perfect. Neither is flawless. Neither is wholly right. The one thing you must understand, though, is this. One side fights to keep things in place, to stabilize a corrupt and unjust government. Why? Because they have been told that nothing could possibly be better. They don't know what will happen if things change, and they fear the possibilities.
"The other side? They fight for change. Something different. Something better than the stagnated, declining government that currently reigns. And because of this, because they are willing to fight for this, they have been termed the 'Death Eaters'. No, Lord Voldemort did not come up with this name. It was coined by your illustrious headmaster."
"You're telling me I should choose the Death Eaters," whispered Harry.
"I'm telling you that you should consider the possibilities, not fear them." Came the voice, from further above Harry. He realized the man was standing up, and stood up also.
"Where are you going?" he asked quickly, as the man strode away. No reply came as the man suddenly strode off the edge of the Astronomy Tower and vanished.
Harry jumped up and rushed to the edge of the tower, looking down frantically. There was nothing to be seen of the odd man who had just jumped off.
It made sense, of course, he thought numbly as he made his way carefully back inside. If he had never really been there, he could call his soul back to his body whenever he wanted to, couldn't he?
It was terrifying, he thought as he walked aimlessly through the halls of Hogwarts, that the only people who he felt really understood him were gradually convincing him that he was on the wrong side. It was even more terrifying that he was beginning to believe them, that he was beginning to see their point of view.
Who was this man, who could travel outside his body and split his soul, who could travel in dreams and casually walk off the sides of high buildings? Did he work for Voldemort? He certainly wasn't making as much effort as Daphne to convert Harry, though he had made his opinion clear.
Imagine being able to travel without your body. Imagine being able to move as freely as the wind. See things you never possibly could, confined to this body, this shell, this bastion of the light that holds you back…
Imagine immortality…
The man's pieces of soul had anchored him to the living world, despite repeated attempts on his life. That was what he had implied. It kept him alive.
Horcrux.
The word appeared suddenly in his head, along with an image of the man who had just left. Harry blinked, reeling, and clutched at the wall.
That had not been one of his own thoughts.
Horcrux.
Harry pulled out his wand and conjured a piece of paper and a quill. After only a week of instruction on this art the paper was oddly lumpy and the quill wrote in a sort of vomit-colored ink, but it would do.
Horcrux.
He stared at the word he had written on the page, wondering what it meant.